Moonlit Sanctuary Moonlit Sanctuary

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Happy to announce last night we were awarded the Premier’s Sustainability Award for Environmental Protection for our work with orange bellied parrots . News on the OBP front is that 3 of our birds were released in Tasmania last Tuesday. The current breeding season in our facility is off to a good start with half a dozen eggs laid so far.
 
Orange bellied parrot with chicks and eggs

Orange bellied parrot with chicks and eggs

  • Media owner MRJ
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Orange-bellied parrot hen with first two chicks hatched in 2017, and two eggs yet to hatch.

Exiting to see our first two orange-bellied parrots for the season this morning! Mum looks worried as she has two more efggs to hatch. So far we have 30 eggs from 7 pairs, with 10 more pairs to start laying yet.
 
Moonlit Sanctuary recently concluded its most successful orange-bellied parrot breeding season yet, with 45 fledlings. The Recovery Team decided on a new tactic this year, ranching. This involves trapping priority wild birds at the end of the season,holding them over winter then releasing them next spring. Moonlit is located in the birds wintering region, so is ideally situated to hold them over winter. We are holding 15 birds in purpose built aviaries.
New tactics for orange-bellied parrot survival
 
An extension and upgrade of the Cockatoo Aviary was completed today. This aviary was originally built in 2011 as a 10m x 4m x 3m high aviary for black cockatoos. We decided that it needed to be longer to give these birds ample room so a decision was made last year to add a 4m long section to each end, giving a total length of 18 metres (about 60ft). The first extension was constructed late last year but the second half of the project had to wait for some essential pre-Christmas visitor facilities and the orange-bellied parrot ranching aviaries. The latest section occupies an area of land that had previously held a smaller aviary that had housed a pair of little corellas. The new section includes a much-needed airlock. The aviary has also been painted flat black, in common with most other aviaries. Current inhabitants include:

1.0 sulphur-crested cockatoo
1.2 Major Mitchell's cockatoos
1.1 gang-gang cockatoos
1.1 galahs
1.1 red-tailed black cockatoos
1.0 yellow-tailed black cockatoo
1.1 eclectus parrots

This is a rather mixed collection, and not conducive to breeding although both Major Mitchell's and gang-gangs bred here before it was expanded. The number of species will decline as other projects come to fruition.
 
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Hoping MRJ (or anybody else) might be able to help - do you know what the lowest point in the population (+ when) was for orange-bellied parrots in the past? Including captive and wild pops.

Currently it seems to stand at ~300 captive/14 wild. Wild population seems to be between 60-120 individuals between '79-90, but I'm not sure whether there were any birds in captivity at this point. The wild population seems to plummit from here, while the captive increases.
 
tetrapod said:
Hoping MRJ (or anybody else) might be able to help - do you know what the lowest point in the population (+ when) was for orange-bellied parrots in the past? Including captive and wild pops.

Currently it seems to stand at ~300 captive/14 wild. Wild population seems to be between 60-120 individuals between '79-90, but I'm not sure whether there were any birds in captivity at this point. The wild population seems to plummit from here, while the captive increases.
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There are some numbers and dates for the captive birds in here (published 1993) - the captive-breeding programme started in 1986: https://www.environment.vic.gov.au/...ange-bellied_Parrot_Neophema_chrysogaster.pdf
 
tetrapod said:
Hoping MRJ (or anybody else) might be able to help - do you know what the lowest point in the population (+ when) was for orange-bellied parrots in the past? Including captive and wild pops.

Currently it seems to stand at ~300 captive/14 wild. Wild population seems to be between 60-120 individuals between '79-90, but I'm not sure whether there were any birds in captivity at this point. The wild population seems to plummit from here, while the captive increases.
Click to expand...
Travelling so apologies for mistakes.

The wild population is censured on arrival of birds in Tasmania for breeding season. Two years ago that stood at 16 and last year at 19 if memory serves me right. There may also have been 2 or 3 mainland release birds surviving on the mainland. This year it is forecast that 19 birds will arrive but to this must be added 29 ‘“high value” birds that were taken from the wild population in autumn and “ranched” at Werribee and Moonlit over winter and that will be re-released in Tasmania in spring. The wild population at the end of the breeding season is considerably higher.

It would be a mistake to talk about a stable population in the 80’s and a subsequent decline. The population has been in decline for decades for various reasons.

The captive population is of course limited by the number of spaces available. Historic management mistakes resulded in a population with massive over-representation by one individual founder and considerable work has taken place in recent years to correct this. However this does mean there are quite a number of birds in the captive population that cannot be used for breeding or released. In addition there were events at a couple of the breeding institutions that restricted the growth of the captive population.

However these issues seem to be behind us and with the new Moonlit facility coming on line in 2016 we are now in a position to both increase the number of birds released and the number of releases. This last year we had three releases, a spring release to increase the number of breeding birds in Tasmania, an autumn release of captive bred juveniles to see if these would survive and migrate better than adult releases, and a mainland release to build up flock size and therefore survivability of birds while wintering on the mainland. A 4th release to try and establish a second breeding location in Tasmania will take place this coming summer.

The captive population and numbers of birds available for release will increase further with the opening of a new facility in Tasmania in 2 years time.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks for the extra info. Any idea what sort of numbers were in captivity in the past?
 
tetrapod said:
Thanks for the extra info. Any idea what sort of numbers were in captivity in the past?
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OBP's have been in captivity for 32 years, and numbers vary year on year and at different times of each year, so no. There have never been more than 400 birds at one time.
 
Moonlit Sanctuary commemorates Threatened Species Day this year by opening a new display aviary for the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot. The new display aviary is part of a group of facilities that help to show the story of this species. Others include:

  • Information booth with signage and videos.
  • OBP food plant garden.
  • Breeding complex viewing point.

We have also added another critically endangered taxon to the Sanctuary, the helmeted honeyeater. We are pleased to be able to support the Zoos Victoria conservation program with a breeding pair which we hope will help boost the population. Our staff have also been working on a new design for a harness to carry a tracking device for the threatened bush stone-curlew. This will help scientists track released birds and thus judge the effectiveness of release projects. Our birds have been wearing the harnesses for some months now and indicators are good, with the birds even mating and laying eggs while still wearing the harnesses!

Lastly with all this activity in the bird department we are pleased to announce Ash Herrod as our Avian Threatened Species Programs Co-ordinator. Ash, a lifelong private aviculturist, came to us from Birdlife Australia and Monash University to head up our Bird Department. His appointment to this role shows the importance Moonlit Sanctuary attaches to our bird conservation programs.
 
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